As you can see from their jolly swish website, indoors it's a well-flash 5-star hotel for the nobs and slebs. Now from my own fairly limited experience of staying — at other people's expense — in 5-star gaffs of more conventional but comparably sumptuous disposition, I have to say I'm not on the whole all that keen on this sort of thing. These places make you feel all the time as if you are failing to live up to their exacting standards. A bit like hiring a cleaning lady and then tidying up before she arrives. Your milage may vary of course, but I don't feel comfortable in the sort of place where you find yourself casting round nervously when visiting the gents' urinal and wondering, "When I have finished and shaken off the drops, will a flunky rush out from a discreet cubby hole and offer to dry, talc and perfume my knob?" That sort of bolleaux makes an honest working-class lad just a wee bit edgy, tha knows.

But enough of my plebeian prejudices. The striking design extends to the admittedly unpromising exterior,

where there is absolutely no signage to identify the building. If you go round the back to the tradesmen's entrance you might find some or other tiny statutory notice which gives a clue to the building's purpose, but its public face is totally blank.

Obviously the management is making a statement. This place is exclusive. The expected and regular clientele will of course know it and will in any case arrive by chauffeured car or, at a pinch, black cab. The servant classes will of course know where it is through their own mysterious networks. Just as the UK has, quite naturally, the privilege of being the only member of the UPU which is not required to put its country name on its postage stamps, so the St Martin's is the kind of establishment which does not demean itself with vulgar public signage like some backstreet kebab house or workmen's canteen.

And so it was that I resolved not to co-operate with this arrogant nonsense. If they weren't prepared to advertise their presence in the conventional manner then I, despite my familiarity with the area, would affect not to know of it.

And then yesterday I was put to the test. An agitated middle-aged gentleman, displaying the beginnings of distress, asked me for directions. Upper middle class in accent and manner and exuding a relaxed patrician confidence that shone through his slightly dowdy dress, he was clearly a natural St Martin's Lane customer.

I have to admit that I laughed sardonically, almost evilly, at his predicament. Which did indeed disconcert him somewhat. But then my underlying all-round decency got the better of me and I pointed out to him the anonymous structure he sought.

Sigh.

As the great philosopher Snoopy once put it, "Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll still be a dog. There's so little hope for advancement".

About Me

Edwin Greenwood is the nom de souris of a Mancunian early baby-boomer, now living in London, who like so many of his cohort has made the transition from cuddly inclusive soft-left liberal into a grumpy old git who is quite prepared to call a spade a black bastard.
(The previous sentence may cause consternation to the Righteous. If this is you, read this and/or this before exploding with indignation.)